Background Information and Context for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible
E ARLY IN THE YEAR 1692, in the small Massachusetts village of Salem, a collection of girls fell ill, falling victim to
hallucinations and seizures. In extremely religious Puritan New England, frightening or surprising occurrences were often
attributed to the devil or his cohorts. The unfathomable sickness spurred fears of witchcraft, and it was not long before the
girls, and then many other residents of Salem, began to accuse other villagers of consorting with devils and casting spells. Old
grudges and jealousies spilled out into the open, fueling the atmosphere of hysteria. The Massachusetts government and
judicial system, heavily influenced by religion, rolled into action. Within a few weeks, dozens of people were in jail on charges
of witchcraft. By the time the fever had run its course, in late August 1692, nineteen people (and two dogs) had been
convicted and hanged for witchcraft.
More than two centuries later, Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915. His career as a playwright
began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Several of his early works won prizes, and during his senior year,
the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit performed one of his works. In 1949, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, which won the
Pulitzer Prize and transformed Miller into a national sensation. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great
American tragedy, and Miller gained an associated eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United
States.
Drawing on research on the witch trials he had conducted while an undergraduate, Miller composed The Crucible in the
early 1950s. Miller wrote the play during the brief ascendancy of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a demagogue whose vitriolic antiCommunism proved the spark needed to propel the United States into a dramatic and fractious anti-Communist fervor during
these first tense years of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Led by McCarthy, special congressional committees conducted
highly controversial investigations intended to root out Communist sympathizers in the United States. As with the alleged
witches of Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess and to identify other Red sympathizers as means of
escaping punishment. The policy resulted in a whirlwind of accusations. As people began to realize that they might be
condemned as Communists regardless of their innocence, many “cooperated,” attempting to save themselves through false
confessions, creating the image that the United States was overrun with Communists and perpetuating the hysteria. The
liberal entertainment industry, in which Miller worked, was one of the chief targets of these “witch hunts,” as their
opponents termed them. Some cooperated; others, like Miller, refused to give in to questioning. Those who were revealed,
falsely or legitimately, as Communists, and those who refused to incriminate their friends, saw their careers suffer, as they
were blacklisted from potential jobs for many years afterward.
At the time of its first performance, in January of 1953, critics and cast alike perceived The Crucible as a direct attack on
McCarthyism (the policy of sniffing out Communists). Its comparatively short run, compared with those of Miller’s other
works, was blamed on anti-Communist fervor. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of spying for the Soviets and
executed, the cast and audience of Miller’s play observed a moment of silence. Still, there are difficulties with interpreting
The Crucible as a strict allegorical treatment of 1950s McCarthyism. For one thing, there were, as far as one can tell, no actual
witches or devil-worshipers in Salem. However, there were certainly Communists in 1950s America, and many of those who
were lionized as victims of McCarthyism at the time, such as the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss (a former State Department
official), were later found to have been in the pay of the Soviet Union. Miller’s Communist friends, then, were often less
innocent than the victims of the Salem witch trials.
If Miller took unknowing liberties with the facts of his own era, he also played fast and loose with the historical record.
The general outline of events in The Crucible corresponds to what happened in Salem of 1692, but Miller’s characters are
often composites.
In an odd way, then, The Crucible is not as a perfect allegory for anti-Communism or a faithful account of the Salem trials,
but it is a powerful and timeless depiction of how intolerance and hysteria can intersect and tear a community apart. In John
Proctor, Miller gives the reader a marvelous tragic hero for any time—a flawed figure who trying to find his moral center just
as everything is falling to pieces around him.